Holiday flourless choclate cake

[Mike Buckley]

This is the dessert from our holiday dinner with friends. It is the only one of the nine courses that I purchased rather than made.

[Digital]

I really would like to stick my face in that.


Bruce

[Suzan J]

I have a chocolate addiction. This is not helping....

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Bruce! Deal with it, Suzan.

[Mike Buckley]

I added a second photo. This is my first shot of food in my makeshift studio and making it really has been a lot of fun. Almost as much fun as eating the cake.

[Rita]

Any leftovers????

[IzzieK]

Lovely shots! Thank the goodness above that I am allergic to chocolate or I would have had bumps and bruises trying to get into that beautiful cake.

[NorthernFocus]

If one has to leave something out of the recipe, better the flour than the chocolate

[Mike Buckley]

Thank the goodness above that I am allergic to chocolate

On the other hand, I feel so bad for you that are are inflicted with such a serious ailment.

If one has to leave something out of the recipe, better the flour than the chocolate

No doubt about that!

[Brownbear]

Beautiful image... Another chocolate enthusiast!

[ShaneS]

How decadent - the image and the cake! I hope it was as tasty as your image appears

If you keep this up and start taking picture of all your food two thing might happen:

1 - You will have to get a Facebook account
2 - Your wife will wonder while all her food is cold because setting up these image must take time

[Wavelength]

Alert! Drooling can spoil your key pad

[IzzieK]

Don't feel bad for me for being allergic to chocolates, at least my husband consider it a blessing that I do not have to rival him with it. Every now and then I suffer the consequence and indulged and cave in and steal some of his stash from his den...I am not totally an angel you know...I love making them. I love cooking many things from scratch...I love food photography and cooking and love looking at my husband's face when he goes for seconds or thirds. I love Thanksgivings and Christmases and New Years and birthdays because I know I am going to prepare something especial including chocolate cakes and other viands we can share...

On the other hand, I feel so bad for you that are are inflicted with such a serious ailment.




No doubt about that!

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, everyone!

Yes, the cake really is great. One of our friends and I agree that it's the best flourless cake we have ever had. It's so rich that we would serve the piece shown in the photographs to no less than three people, especially at the end of a nine-course dinner.

I'm so glad to know that Isabel can cook with chocolate. As an example, some people have such serious allergies to shrimp and peanuts that just smelling them causes problems.

I actually do plan to photograph our favorite dishes but it's a low priority right now. I will never ever establish a presence on Facebook.

[Mike Buckley]

By the way, for those interested in the intricacies of the photography, changing the position of the camera and subject for the second photo resulted in a lot of glare on the left side and top of the cake.

I added a polarizer filter which worked great but only on the side or the top, never both. So, I positioned the filter to deal with the side. Doing so eliminated about 95% or more of the glare there. (Using a polarizer is by far the quickest solution for eliminating glare when it works. When it doesn't work because of the material the subject is made of and the type of reflection it produces, the only alternative is to change the position of the light source and/or the subject relative to the camera.)

I was using a lamp providing light through a large diffuser to light the cake from above and behind. It has five compact fluorescent bulbs but I was using only three of them. I stopped using one of those three to eliminate most but not all of the glare in the top of the cake.

All of that has to do with attending to the family of angles that I learned about in my bible, the fourth edition of Light: Science and Magic.